For nearly 30 years, the identity of a woman found wrapped in plastic in the woods of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, stumped investigators. They knew her solely as “Unknown Jane Doe,” a woman with brown hair, likely between the ages of 35 and 45 years old, and no taller than 5-foot-2.
But this week, detectives made a major breakthrough, identifying her as Merrybeth Hodgkinson, a 31-year-old exotic dancer who vanished after visiting with family in Warminster, Pennsylvania in 1992.
“When we exhumed her body, there was an unknown grave marker with the name Jane Doe,” Bensalem detective Chris McMullin said announcing the discovery Tuesday. More than 50 missing women were considered and ultimately deemed not a match over the course of the lengthy investigation.
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“Now when she’s returned to her family, they can put Merrybeth Hodgkinson on it,” he said.
The path to revealing who she was began on Sept. 18, 1995, when kids who were playing in a wooded area near a diner in Bensalem found Hodgkinson’s decomposed naked body enveloped in plastic wrap. Forensic experts estimated at the time that the woman had likely been two to three years, police said.
Several articles of clothing, in addition to a pair of crucifixes—one silver, one gold—and a brown beaded seat cushion were found buried nearby, cops said, but investigators were unable to find any kind of identification. The Bucks County Coroner’s Office ruled the death a homicide after suspecting strangulation, although the precise cause of death was undetermined, they said.
The dearth of clues confounded detectives and the case went cold until McMullin revived it, and Hodgkinson’s body was exhumed from its resting place at a cemetery in Telford, Pennsylvania, in 2004.
“I was dissatisfied with the original investigation,” McMullin told the Bucks County Courier Times. “I felt a lot more can be done.”
Hodgkinson’s remains were sent to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification where a DNA profile was extracted and uploaded to a DNA index system in an effort to identify her.
But even as DNA was processed, Hodgkinson’s name eluded the dogged detective for decades until a combination of genealogical testing and matching on DNA sites finally revealed her identity.
MicMullen said that with the help of forensic testing lab BODE Technology, investigators built a DNA profile of Hodgkinson. In November, her profile was uploaded to genealogy research websites GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA.com, which compiles data from different DNA testing companies.
Additional research led by a Virginia genealogy expert, Jennifer Moore, pointed to Hodgkinson’s name within less than a week.
“The family tree had led to a hit on GEDmatch, which led us to a brother and a sister,” McMullin said during Tuesday’s news conference, according to KYW-TV.
The profile paired with additional genetic testing from Hodgkinson’s siblings confirmed her identity, he added.
The discovery marks a major breakthrough in the cold case, but detectives are still searching for answers about Hodgkinson’s mysterious death. McMullin said Tuesday that police are sifting through the other items found near her body for shreds of DNA.
According to the Courier Times, Hodgkinson’s death appears to mirror the murder of another exotic dancer the same year.
The bludgeoned and strangled body of 42-year-old Toshiko Ciaccio was also found naked and wrapped in clear plastic and carpet near her home in September 1992, according to police.
In 1994, William “Wild Bill” Montgomery was arrested in connection with the murder of Ciaccio and another young woman whose body was also found wrapped up near the Delaware River in August 1993.
